Re: [mythsoc] Which Williams?

... One of Tolkien s concerns in his later years was to separate his works from Williams s. He really disliked being thrown in a thematic heap with that very

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, Mar 18 1:13 AM

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At 12:58 PM 3/17/2008 -0500, David Emerson wrote:

>I find that (at least for me) the major stumbling block to enjoying Charles
>Williams is the very fact of his association with Lewis and Tolkien. This
>originally led me to expect that his fiction would be somewhat like theirs.
>When I found it more to be like Raymond Chandler meets Aleister Crowley, it
>threw me for a loop.

One of Tolkien's concerns in his later years was to separate his works from Williams's. He really disliked being thrown in a thematic heap with that very different writer, whose style and attitudes in literature he did not at all endorse. That only happened after critics started potting the Inklings as a unified group.

We can thank a famous article by John Rateliff for clarifying that this was Tolkien's concern, and not any (non-existent) festering personal jealousy against Williams or any such rot, though belief in such still exists - there was an impervious nimnul spouting such nonsense on the Coinherence list just a few weeks ago.

At 09:15 PM 3/17/2008 +0000, Marc Drayer wrote:

>One book by
>Williams I've always wanted to read is his Arthurian poem cycle
>called "Taleissen Through Logres." Any here read that and can
>comment on it?

Taliessin. And its followup, The Region of the Summer Stars. Not a work one can comment on briefly. Our local group got years of discussion out of those two books by taking one poem at a time and examining it line-by-line. It's really unreadable in any other way than slowly and carefully.

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